Adidas Becomes NBA’s official Sponsor in Europe

Following the increase in the number of European players that joined NBA teams in the last few years, the interest in basketball has increased on the continent. In order to capitalize on this, NBA and Adidas, the official sponsor have announced an agreement that grants the sports giant world wide rights to market NBA apparel.

According to the vice president of Adidas basketball, Lawrence Norman, they’ve got plans to aggressively promote thee items in eastern Europe, Russia and Middle East. In these countries, basketball has increased in popularity and kids there want to emulate their heroes. Such is the case in turkey where players such as Hedo Turkoglu are extremely popular, even more than Michael Jordan.

The deal tries to also capitalize of the fact that Europe will be the focus in the world of basketball in the next 4-5 years, with the FIBA world basketball championships that will be staged in Turkey in 2010 and Spain in 2014, the London Olympics that will be held in 2012, and the European championships that will take place in 2011 and 2013.